Drakow, that's the OCG banlist. Gorz and Whirlwind are both at 2 there : p

I predict Inzektors and Hieratics having some sort of presence this TCG format. I wonder if it is possible for Sabers to make a return, considering the existence of Saber Hole and Gatmuz's Emergency Call; Sabers will possess decent recursion, defense, and backrow destruction, and they do have access to Beast and Barkion as well as the new Synchros, so we'll have to see. Blackwings are in a similar boat, with triple Whirlwind, Icarus Attack, and Delta Crow - Anti Reverse; since Starlight Road will see less play due to the banning of Heavy Storm and limiting of Torrential, we might see some big plays o'clock from these guys as well.

Shock Master is a broken OP card! OCG toned the power up, and TCG toned the power down, so it's completely reasonable to ban Shock Master in the TCG. I think Dragoons and Diva are the correct hits in Mermail, actually; free searches 24/7 is super annoying, as is the power to constantly put tons of damage onto the board for no apparent reason. Mermail needed to lose consistency, and with Diva and Dragoons hit, it will do exactly that.

I think Divine Wind is a dumb card and should be removed. It wasn't even the Blaze Fenix OTK that was the problem... the very existence of Harpie Dancer makes Divine Wind a problematic card : s

It took me a while to get used to both banlists, and I'm not certain which is my favourite but both have merit. While the OCG banlist is somewhat traditional, playing it mostly safe, it is in my opinion a perfectly solid list. Most questionable thing there is the way they handled the Blaze Fenix OTK - they both overhit it and chose the wrong cards to overhit. Blaze Fenix to 2 = OTK dead. Otherwise, no complaints from me.

The TCG list however, is far more ambitious. It's as if they're trying to calm the players who complain about power creep so fiercely. The more ambitious the list, the more failings. Positive points for the TCG are:

- Agents are free!
- Blackwing have had their return sped up!
- Divine Wind is safe!
- 3-axis Fire Fist are dead!
- Random overpowered crap like Gateway of the Six was hit!

Negatives:

- They hit the wrong 3-axis card
- The reversed Mermail hits force the deck to play in a far more linear manner
- Gladiator Beast Bestiari is fine to go to 2 in the OCG but is annoyingly at 1 here
- Shock Master banned from unlimited for no apparent reason (?)

I feel as if both the OCG and TCG lists are going to move around a lot, though - possibly they'll get closer in terms of their ideology until they're again the same before Worlds. A lot of the "let's hit it differently" moves like the Mermail and Fire Fist swap, as well as the lack of Divine Wind on the TCG list, seem to be based around Konami wanting to test to see which hit is ideal for the respective decks. But I must say I'm finding it somewhat baffling that Konami of Japan thinks Shock Master is fine at 3, while the TCG thinks 1 is too many.

As primarily a Mermail and Harpie player, I'm conflicted. Obviously Harpies are better off with the TCG list, so that's fine, but while Mermails are perfectly viable under both lists, I preferred the OCG moves. Diva and Dragoons are two of the reasons the deck is so fun: their searching gives you so many options. In contrast Abyss-sphere and Abyssteus are focused entirely on getting out your level 7s, which is far less interesting. The deck is forced to just try and overpower you with Megalo before the lack of hand management hurts it now, especially with Pot of Avarice banned.

There's a reason why Spirit got Limited: to help curb the spamming of Brotherhood of the Fire Fist - Horse Prince. Before the list was announced, I went up against a few Horse Prince spam decks, and man, those were overwhelming, even though I managed to come out at top once.

I was actually referring to the TCG banlist :C
I'm also glad that they didn't follow the OCG banlist this time. A lot of my decks that I play right now are going to be very viable in this format. Not so sure about my Empty Jar anymore tho, because of Card Destruction being banned =

Shock Master is a broken OP card! OCG toned the power up, and TCG toned the power down, so it's completely reasonable to ban Shock Master in the TCG. I think Dragoons and Diva are the correct hits in Mermail, actually; free searches 24/7 is super annoying, as is the power to constantly put tons of damage onto the board for no apparent reason. Mermail needed to lose consistency, and with Diva and Dragoons hit, it will do exactly that.

I think Divine Wind is a dumb card and should be removed. It wasn't even the Blaze Fenix OTK that was the problem... the very existence of Harpie Dancer makes Divine Wind a problematic card : s

I disagree that Shock Master is an OP card. He is very powerful, but not particularly easy to make. It's also not overly meta relevant - recent meta decks do not have the ability to spam triple material rank 4s. I can see it as a pre-emptive strike against Xyz Infernities, but aside from that it only removes a weapon lower tier decks have. I agree that free searching is annoying, but Abyss-sphere and Abyssteus provide similar consistency. Hitting them not only leaves Atlanteans intact, but hurts Mermails without making them more linear. Diva however is an extremely powerful card, worthy of a hit on principal.

Divine Wind is only dumb because of self-interaction. One free level 4 per turn is fine. The problem is that Divine Wind's once per turn clause is of the weaker variety, so replacing it with a new copy allows re-use and subsequent abuse. I do strongly dislike hitting Duel Terminal cards, though. Seems a bit cruel to put so many cards with genuine uses on the banlist because Konami were so incredibly lazy with their restrictions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PlatinumDude

There's a reason why Spirit got Limited: to help curb the spamming of Brotherhood of the Fire Fist - Horse Prince. Before the list was announced, I went up against a few Horse Prince spam decks, and man, those were overwhelming, even though I managed to come out at top once.

I know the power Fire Fist have. I do not however think Spirit is the correct card to hit. 3-axis Fire Fist does very little of note without Rooster, but it still exists. 3-axis without Spirit does absolutely nothing. It also stops players from ever having a chance at playing a deck that probably wouldn't have been overly dominant anyway. They've hit deck diversity for no good reason.

I disagree that Shock Master is an OP card. He is very powerful, but not particularly easy to make. It's also not overly meta relevant - recent meta decks do not have the ability to spam triple material rank 4s. I can see it as a pre-emptive strike against Xyz Infernities, but aside from that it only removes a weapon lower tier decks have. I agree that free searching is annoying, but Abyss-sphere and Abyssteus provide similar consistency. Hitting them not only leaves Atlanteans intact, but hurts Mermails without making them more linear. Diva however is an extremely powerful card, worthy of a hit on principal.

Divine Wind is only dumb because of self-interaction. One free level 4 per turn is fine. The problem is that Divine Wind's once per turn clause is of the weaker variety, so replacing it with a new copy allows re-use and subsequent abuse. I do strongly dislike hitting Duel Terminal cards, though. Seems a bit cruel to put so many cards with genuine uses on the banlist because Konami were so incredibly lazy with their restrictions.

Shock Master ends games for some decks. Name Monster for Agents / Chaos Dragon or Spell for Prophecy; instant game over. And as we've seen from the banlist, Konami dislikes instant game over cards. It does not need to be spammed for it to be OP. As for triple material rank 4s with ease ... aren't you overlooking your own deck? I'm sure a few other decks other than Harpies can do it, though. Doesn't matter if they're not as good as meta, Shock Master is extremely toxic. (Also, Verz and Constellar can make it without too much fuss ... keep Kerykeion or Sombre around for a turn, welp. Constellar just likes Pleiades a lot so it will be a rare day in which they make Shock Master unless it's to perform virtual lockdown, because Pleiades locks equally hard.)

Diva is strong by itself and stronger in tandem with Heavy Infantry, and although you are correct that Sphere and Teus give consistency, it removes the ability for the deck to search just any Sea Serpent (for example ... Moulinglacia, Heavy Infantry, or ... DIVA). Pike and Teus are not able to search out just any monster you want, and do so at the loss of resources in hand - in exchange for pluses on the field sometimes or a lot of the time, sure, but Dragoons is just like WHATEVER I'M GONNA PITCH THIS THOUGHTLESSLY AND GET A FREE SEARCH YOLO. I don't have much to say about Sphere except that it's pretty strong, and Mermail would have suffered a lot if both Dragoons and Sphere had been hit.

Obviously one free level 4 is fine! So are the baby dragons without Super Rejuvenation (that's a little bit of a stretch but not too much of one, plus there are other examples). Konami needs to ban with respect to abuse cases. If you will recall, Divine Wind was printed earlier, before Konami started doing the restrictions in a more limited style; after all, Mist Valley was printed in the time of Brionac, and Divine Wind, in Storm of Ragnarok.

Shock Master ends games for some decks. Name Monster for Agents / Chaos Dragon or Spell for Prophecy; instant game over. And as we've seen from the banlist, Konami dislikes instant game over cards. It does not need to be spammed for it to be OP. As for triple material rank 4s with ease ... aren't you overlooking your own deck? I'm sure a few other decks other than Harpies can do it, though. Doesn't matter if they're not as good as meta, Shock Master is extremely toxic. (Also, Verz and Constellar can make it without too much fuss ... keep Kerykeion or Sombre around for a turn, welp. Constellar just likes Pleiades a lot so it will be a rare day in which they make Shock Master unless it's to perform virtual lockdown, because Pleiades locks equally hard.)

Diva is strong by itself and stronger in tandem with Heavy Infantry, and although you are correct that Sphere and Teus give consistency, it removes the ability for the deck to search just any Sea Serpent (for example ... Moulinglacia, Heavy Infantry, or ... DIVA). Pike and Teus are not able to search out just any monster you want, and do so at the loss of resources in hand - in exchange for pluses on the field sometimes or a lot of the time, sure, but Dragoons is just like WHATEVER I'M GONNA PITCH THIS THOUGHTLESSLY AND GET A FREE SEARCH YOLO. I don't have much to say about Sphere except that it's pretty strong, and Mermail would have suffered a lot if both Dragoons and Sphere had been hit.

Obviously one free level 4 is fine! So are the baby dragons without Super Rejuvenation (that's a little bit of a stretch but not too much of one, plus there are other examples). Konami needs to ban with respect to abuse cases. If you will recall, Divine Wind was printed earlier, before Konami started doing the restrictions in a more limited style; after all, Mist Valley was printed in the time of Brionac, and Divine Wind, in Storm of Ragnarok.

The thing is, Shock Master wouldn't be an instant win against certain decks if Konami would make them more balanced in terms of which cards they're more focused on. Too many decks are based on monsters only, and then Spellbooks exist. But that's really another debate, and yes Shock Master is extremely powerful in the game right now. He's an "on principal" hit, I suppose. And I wouldn't say Harpies can spam him. First turn Shock Master definitely happens, but it usually takes 3 cards from the hand, and only works out well if a Hysteric Sign finds its way into the mix. Harpies have to throw everything at spamming Shock Master and I don't think that's terribly unacceptable. Perhaps the difference between us is that I don't really mind massively powerful cards as long as they don't overcentralise the meta.

I know all that haha. Diva and Dragoons are great hits as regards how competitive the deck is, and Diva was a hit waiting to happen from the second she was printed. My problem is that they've turned Mermails from a very diverse deck to rank7.dek and it's just really really boring. If I wanted to play Big Eye over and over, I'd be running Dragon Rulers!

Also OF COURSE SHOCKMASTER wouldn't be OP if that was true but ... it is true, so ... ... additionally, you could just make multiple Shock Master and call two or all three card types. Pretty annoy.

But it's all XYZ at the end of the day :'( Basically Diva is the key to most of the variety in Mermail plays, though Aqua Spirit has opened up a looooooot of doors that Diva didn't. I'd still rather have synchros and rank 2s than more common Bahamut summons (though summoning a Trite is always extremely satisfying).

Yeah I know there's no point using "what if" scenarios. Honestly I should probably get over Shock Master. It'd help if the other 3 material rank 4s were better though! Ouroboros lacks something.

In other news there's an upcoming structure deck in Japan that looks to have something of a focus on Cyber Dragon, but there's also two upcoming "duelist packs" (or whatever), one with a focus on Ancient Gears and the other on Lightsworn. Both of those decks being GX era has interesting implications, it makes me wonder if they're already moving on from bringing back DM era decks. It'll kinda suck if they are, 3 old decks getting good stuff is nice but it's not nearly enough!

Don't the Japanese have like a Shark/Rio pack coming out, or like a Yuma 2? Idk tbh.

I apologize for not having much to say about the current topics, seeing as I only recently reentered the Yugioh scene and I really don't know in-depth stuff. I was wondering if anyone would help me with my deck.

Spoiler:

It's doesn't exactly follow any form (besides plants, loosely). My favorite card is #87, so I kinda revolved the deck around bring plants back from the Grave to summon as much as possible from the extra deck. Also good to note, that I am a noob, so really I guess any changes you would make would be appreciated. Obviously I'm running a lot of monsters and stuff that make no sense, but it kinda fits the theme.

Queen of the Night is such a beautiful card, I adore her. Her effects are kinda subpar but the name / art <3 Unfortunately I don't think a Flower Princess deck is ideal for summoning her, though. You'd probably be better off using Hieratics, Blue-Eyes or Gimmick Puppet because in a plant deck she's not much easier to summon than Sophia, Goddess of Rebirth :'( I'd like to help you with the deck but I don't think there's anything that could make it at all consistent.

Okay guys so I'm back playing Yu-gi-oh since we've gone through terrible formats and now this format is actually decent in my opinion since so many decks can now in theory make it to the top and it's not currently a 2 deck race like last format (Dragons or Prophecy.)

I recently went to a silver event playing Six Samurai and went 2 wins and 2 losses. I decided as a last minute choice to main deck D-Fissure and Macro Cosmos which help me win against Dragon Ruler Plants. I was wondering if anyone has good side deck suggestions for Mermail and Firefist ?

@Flush'd

First thing I would do is to try and cut the deck down to 40 cards and see which cards you like more in the deck. Many players currently use the plant engine with another archetype such as dragons or physics. I wonder if Kaarkuri Machina plants could make a come back since it was an older style deck but I reckon it has similar plays now with spore back.

Flush'd, if you make the deck 60 cards but keep to the rule of 1 each I will play Highlander with you :D I love Highlander! Your deck is missing some of the staples of the format but otherwise pretty ok.

But uh, competitively plants are kinda eh. Queen of the Night is cool but hard to summon, and the investment of 3 level 8s is brutal.

Queen of the Night is such a beautiful card, I adore her. Her effects are kinda subpar but the name / art <3 Unfortunately I don't think a Flower Princess deck is ideal for summoning her, though. You'd probably be better off using Hieratics, Blue-Eyes or Gimmick Puppet because in a plant deck she's not much easier to summon than Sophia, Goddess of Rebirth :'( I'd like to help you with the deck but I don't think there's anything that could make it at all consistent.

I don't actually think Queen of the Night would see much playing time. A lot of the cards are geared at bringing out the high level monsters, but I can see Felgrand being a more viable option. This is a deck I plan on using irl, so it might sound odd, but having the deck revolve around the theme of plants is something that I'd like to adhere to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renpuu

First thing I would do is to try and cut the deck down to 40 cards and see which cards you like more in the deck. Many players currently use the plant engine with another archetype such as dragons or physics. I wonder if Kaarkuri Machina plants could make a come back since it was an older style deck but I reckon it has similar plays now with spore back.

I've stared at this deck for awhile and find it pretty hard to cut 5 more cards. And I feel like with the plant theme, a lot of the monsters work specifically targeting other plants, i.e. Lord Poison, so the synergy is there. Idk, what would you cut? Probably the random beat sticks like Botanical Lion, and Cephalotus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Flush'd, if you make the deck 60 cards but keep to the rule of 1 each I will play Highlander with you :D I love Highlander! Your deck is missing some of the staples of the format but otherwise pretty ok.

But uh, competitively plants are kinda eh. Queen of the Night is cool but hard to summon, and the investment of 3 level 8s is brutal.

Don't know what Highlander is tbh haha. And yeah, Queen of the Night is pretty bad. The individual Flower Princesses are probably better alone. I was thinking that on the off-chance that I'm winning a duel and could make that tribute, I'd summon her. But yeah, there are better rank 8s. And what staples am I missing? I've been out of the game too long to know what's relevant anymore haha.

Tbh, I don't exactly know what I'm asking for. I appreciate all the thoughts though haha.

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